Monday, July 15, 2013

The last several months have been a blur of diaper changes and burping accidents -- it's weird how early parenthood compresses the flow of time. I last posted here in February? That is a hard pill to swallow.

Well, let's do a quick update.

I am still getting up at 4am every morning to work on Nonplayer #2. It may be more accurate to say that I am just not attempting to go back to sleep when baby Ian has his early-morning spaz-attack. I have so much respect for the HOVD parents now-- it is very, very difficult to maintain productivity when you've got both a kid and a day job vying for bandwidth.

I would be lying if I said that NP #2 was progressing quickly, but you probably already guessed that after waiting two years for it. That said, I am making steady progress and nearing a big milestone, and I hope that things will accelerate a bit after I cross that threshold. I have showed the unfinished book to a few people now, and the reaction seems pretty positive. Hopefully folks won't be too disappointed with the finished product.

As far as what happens after #2 comes out -- to be honest, I have no idea. It is not easy to find time to work on the book. When I think that I've got five more issues to go, and I multiply that number by the number of years I've spent on the current issue, it's hard not to despair. Faced with this yawning abyss, all I can do is focus on getting this issue done in the hopes that its arrival may trigger some miraculous reordering of my work situation.

The mechanism by which this might occur is unknown to me. I suppose when the hardback European editions come out (collecting issues 1 and 2 in a single volume), it could catch on in France or something. There's at least a theoretical possibility that such an event could bring in enough money to cover a mortgage. Other miracles... well, there's always the Deus ex Hollywood. Maybe Steven Spielberg is browsing the racks at Golden Apple and has a eureka moment when he sees the comic. Bam, I'm in the money.

What else? A revival of the practice of art patronage? Perhaps there's some nerdy billionaire out there who wants to see the series completed so badly that he's willing to pay me a salary to work on it full time? Somebody show the comic to Bill and see if he's interested. I'm happy to commute across the lake to Bellevue if he wants me to work on site.

Of course, there's always the vague promise of Kickstarter, but I'm still having trouble making the numbers add up there. Kickstarter would have been great if I'd attempted this book two decades ago, back when I could couch-surf for months at a time. But with a kid, in America? Only if your whole family has Wolverine-like healing abilities. At the first sign of a sniffle, you'll be out ten grand.

I'm open to any suggestions you guys may have. In the meantime, I'm keeping my head down, my stylus moving, and holding out hope for a brighter tomorrow.